In this month's spotlight, Colin Bradie, Head of the Creative Learning and Young People Team in Creative Scotland shares his thoughts on the recently announced awardees of the Youth Arts Open Fund.
Young people from LYRA - one of the organisations supported through the Youth Arts Open Fund - during a performance. Image by Andrew Perry.
We’ve only recently swept away the cake crumbs from the 20th anniversary celebrations of the Youth Music Initiative (YMI), a programme funded by The Scottish Government that has consistently demonstrated the significant impacts quality music-making activities have on children and young people’s lives and learning.
It is a model to be proud of and to rightly celebrate, but it’s also a model to look to build on, where we recognise the positive impacts that all of the arts, music or otherwise, can have on children’s and young people’s lives, especially in light of the recent challenges of COVID-19.
The Scottish Government’s recent commitment to expanding the success of the YMI to wider art-forms has opened the door to this, and looking to emulate the strengths of the YMI our friends at YouthLink Scotland seemed the obvious partner to support us in delivering this new fund, where we knew that creative, third sector and youth work organisations could effectively collaborate on delivering a wider art-form offer which would reach children and young people who may have few other opportunities to engage. With this the Youth Arts Open Fund was launched by YouthLink Scotland in May this year.
The demand for the fund was huge, and as always, we simply couldn’t fully support the level of ambition partners are clearly capable of providing. However, with 78 projects being delivered across 22 local authorities we are delighted to see such a wide and inspiring range of projects spearheading this new fund.
Young people from LYRA during a performance . Image by Andrew Perry.
We have everything from filmmaking to animation; photography to graffiti; jewellery making to sculpting; capoeira to dance; podcasting to theatre making, all being delivered by partners across a range of settings including empty shops, youth clubs, schools, football clubs and a Young Offenders Institute. The diversity of the projects being delivered is extraordinary and this overview only provides a snapshot of the activity being offered by funded partners.
It seems therefore the Youth Arts Open Fund will demonstrate that there is a very wide range of stakeholders across Scotland’s communities who can play a role in improving children and young people’s lives and learning through arts and creativity. With a more diverse art-form offer comes a greater reach across our communities, and therefore an increased range of activity for children and young people to access and enjoy.
We are grateful to the Scottish Government for this vital support on top on the success of the YMI, and we look forward to working with YouthLink Scotland to capture and profile all the fantastic learning and outcomes from the Youth Arts Open Fund projects as they progress over the next year.
